This page curates my teaching materials and writing related to economic inequality, as well as some additional resources I recommend. A few items:
- This essay about meritocracy, inequality, and higher education draws on research and reporting about disproportionate attendance of the wealthiest students at the most prestigious U.S. higher education institutions and the extent (or lack thereof) of upward mobility that they provide.
- I have reviewed Peter Georgescu’s Capitalists Arise!, a book I find to be an extremely accessible description of the current inequality crisis from a purely corporate vantage point.
- I think Paul Krugman’s reviews of Robert’s Reich’s Saving Capitalism and of Thomas Piketty’s Capitalism in the 21st Century are extremely efficient gateways to this broader topic. The books themselves are tremendously worthwhile; the reviews have only selected major points, but they deliver the added benefit of Krugman’s perspective.
- I’m a fan of Oxford economist Max Roser’s Our World in Data page on income inequality, and the text and graphics provide the best simple summary I’ve seen. In a remarkably concise page, Roser and co-author Esteban Ortiz-Ospina provide snippets of historical perspective, intra-OECD heterogeneity, and global context.
I’m in the process of producing a series of short videos, Economic Inequality: an introduction in three short chapters, with accompanying materials:
- Part 1 – Framing, Measures, and Definitions – on YouTube and on Canvas (restricted access)
- Part 2 – Analysis, Interpretations, and Critiques [coming soon]
- Part 3 – Extensions [coming soon]